California

Corporations, LLCs and partnerships, searchable free by entity name, entity number, and agent name. Filed documents are viewable at no charge, which is unusual and very useful.

The Statement of Information is the document to open. It names the officers, directors, the manager or members of an LLC, the agent for service of process, and the principal business address as at that filing. California requires it regularly, so a series of them gives you a dated address and associate history.

Free search of financing statements by debtor name, with the filed images available. A UCC-1 names the debtor, the secured party and the collateral, which frequently names the bank.

California also records state tax liens through the Secretary of State on the same system, so a debtor-name search can surface Franchise Tax Board and Employment Development Department liens alongside commercial filings.

DCA License Search covers most of the state’s regulated professions in one place — contractors, medical, nursing, real estate appraisers, security guards, and many more.

Records carry license status, expiry, the address of record, and public disciplinary action. The address of record is the useful part: licensees are required to keep it current, and for sole practitioners it is very often a home address.

Every deed, deed of trust, lien, abstract of judgment and lis pendens is recorded with the recorder of the county where the land sits. There’s no statewide land records search.

The larger counties — Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Santa Clara, Alameda, Sacramento — have decent online grantor/grantee indexes. Smaller counties often don’t.

Assessor parcel data is usually the easier free lookup and will confirm ownership and assessed value without a recorder search.

California has no statewide public case search. Each of the 58 superior courts runs its own index, and quality varies enormously — Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego are usable; some rural counties offer almost nothing online.

Because there’s no DOJ criminal check available to you, the superior court index is the criminal search in California. You need to know the county.

Case search links for all 58 counties are below — each one goes to that court’s own public search.

You cannot obtain a California criminal record on another person. Third-party requests aren’t authorized and won’t be processed.

The only DOJ product available to a member of the public is a review of your own record: $25 to the DOJ, a rolling fee to the Live Scan operator, form BCIA 8016RR, fingerprints required.

Penal Code § 11142 makes it an offense to pass your own record to an unauthorized third party, so the "have the subject pull it" workaround isn’t available either.

Use the county superior courts instead.

Fees rose on 1 January 2026 under AB 64. Birth $31, death $26, marriage $19, dissolution $18, fetal death $23.

If you don’t qualify as an authorized requester you still get the record as an informational copy — same content, stamped so it can’t establish identity. That’s usually all an investigator needs.

The county recorder holds records for events in that county and is often faster than the state. Older records may only be at the county.

California holds one of the largest unclaimed property funds in the country. Free name search over dormant accounts, uncashed cheques, insurance proceeds and safe deposit box contents.

Each record carries the address the holder had on file when the property was reported — a free, dated address.

California voter registration data is not a general public record. Access is limited to election, scholarly, journalistic, political and governmental purposes under the Elections Code, and misuse is a criminal offense.

Don’t plan a California skip trace around the voter file.